


how long it's been since I left for the war

by sophia_sol



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hugs, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophia_sol/pseuds/sophia_sol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After several weeks of following him, you decide that must be the point. He's not chasing you down - so he wants you to come to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how long it's been since I left for the war

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sentientcitizen for her wonderful helpfulness in betaing. This fic would be a mess without her.

You know Captain America wants to find you, but even after he's out of the hospital he hardly seems to be trying at all. You can tell he's doing his best to keep track of you, but he doesn't make any attempts to actually follow up on what he can find of your trail. He is loudly and conspicuously present wherever he happens to go; keeping track of him in return is no effort at all. You watch his movements through the city as he goes jogging with the Falcon, visits a nursing care home, stops by an art store and purchases a new sketch pad, eats alone in a cafe while typing one-handed on his phone.

After several weeks of following him, you decide that must be the point. He's not chasing you down - so he wants you to come to him.

You abandon your observations when you realize this, taking refuge in quiet suburbs where he never comes. You don't know why you've been watching him, and you don't know why you've stopped.

The Winter Soldier was always deployed with orders. Often the situation on the ground required him to alter the plan, but there was always a clearly defined goal. You don't know how to understand the underlying patterns of your actions anymore. You are a broken machine, misfiring at random.

The suburb where you've gone to ground has a library and you gravitate towards it. You enter it through a side door. It is unthreatening and familiar; libraries are libraries. You are wearing jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt with an unfamiliar slogan on the front, a baseball cap for a team you don't recognize, a glove on your left hand. Your hair is pulled back tidily and you are careful to walk in a loose amble, your posture relaxed. Nobody in the library gives you a second look as you disappear into the stacks.

You wander quietly up and down the aisles, letting the tide of topics wash over you. You pull a few books out, one at a time, but you end up sliding each back into place, spines carefully aligned with the edge of the shelf.

At one point as you scan down the book titles it occurs to you that you should be looking at a whole section of books about Captain America, but the shelf has been picked nearly bare. Public interest in the Captain has been rekindled after the recent events.

One of the few books left in the Captain America section has the name of Bucky Barnes in the subtitle. You reach slowly towards it. Your breath feels hot in your chest and your face is prickly beneath the surface of your skin and you don't understand. You don't understand why you snatch your hand back, why you turn from the shelf and stride quickly out of the stacks, past the circulation desk, out the door. You continue your retreat until you reach the nearby park, where you pull yourself up into a tree where you will be hidden by the dense leaves. You perch on a branch, leaning up against the trunk, and take slow, deep breaths.

The next day you return to watching Captain America. 

You see him rub his face with one hand as he walks in the front door of his building at the end of the day, his shoulders slumped. You frown. You slip into the building in his wake, keeping just far enough behind to be out of his line of sight. Your feet are silent on the stairs, and you wait below the landing before Captain America's floor while you listen to him fumble with his keys, push his door open, and shut it firmly behind him. Then you go up the last flight of stairs and pause in front of his door.

What are you doing? Captain America wants you to go to him, so here you are? But there is nothing else for you to do. You don't have a purpose anymore. You don't know what to do without one.

You raise your right hand, close your fingers into a fist, and let it fall against the wooden door.

"Coming!" you hear Captain America say, muffled through the sturdy wood. You stand your ground and do not move when the door swings open. You don't say anything.

He stares at you and his tired, slumped posture from moments ago disappears entirely. "Bucky," he says, sounding almost breathless, his gaze intense. You look away.

"Do you want to come in?" he ventures, and you nod. He moves back, out of the way, and you step across the border between inside and out. He closes the door behind you, but you are not trapped. You already know the location of the windows, and if necessary you can overpower the Captain for long enough to get past him. It would be easy; he's compromised by his emotional attachment to you.

He and you stand there in the entranceway and say nothing, do nothing. You wait for him to make a move. You're here because of him, after all. You'll take your cues from him.

"Bucky," he says again, and this time it's a sigh. You don't tell him that that name no longer fits you. You don't tell him his childhood friend is just as dead as if that long-ago fall had really killed you. You just nod when he asks if he can hug you, and let your face press into his shoulder as his arms encircle you, one hand at your waist and the other cradling your head.

You are caged by his embrace, but you do not try to escape. You merely stand pressed against him and ignore the quick pattering of your pulse while his hand on your back moves slowly, gently, steadily.

This was the correct thing to do, you tell yourself. You will your pulse to calm. Carefully you lift your arms and fold them around him in return. His hand pauses and his fingers tighten in your hair.

You breathe out.


End file.
